The disintegration of the propeller as its blades struck a solid, ungiving object was followed by a hurricane of metal shards that ripped through the walls of the rubber skirt like shrapnel from a bomb. Then came a second, more massive explosion as the tank's walls were penetrated and it burst from the sudden release of eighty cubic feet of air pressurized at three thousand pounds. Not content to be left out, the fuel tanks added to the cataclysm by erupting in a blazing conflagration that sent a firestorm into the air and fiery particles of the hovercraft flying onto the roof of the plantation house and quickly setting the wooden structure ablaze.
Giordino was stunned in horror as he watched the hovercraft lift out of the water and then violently shred itself into a thousand flaming fragments. Bodies spun through the air like drunken circus acrobats and splashed into the water with the inert stiffness of mannequins dropped from a helicopter. The windows of the plantation house were blown into jagged shards. The explosion rumbled over the surface of the canal and struck Giordino's exposed face like a punch thrown by the gloved fist of a boxer. A waterspout of fiery fuel enveloped the hovercraf
t, and when it fell away and the spray had scattered into the night, the burning remains of the craft were sinking into the waters of the canal amid a great hiss of steam and dark smoke that swirled and quickly became lost in the black sky.
In growing fear, Giordino frantically paddled the skiff toward the shattered wreckage. Reaching the outer perimeter of the burning debris, he strapped on his air tank and rolled into the canal. Lit by a field of flames on the surface, the water beneath took on a look of eerie candescence, ghostly and threatening. In a strange kind of restrained frenzy, he searched through the mangled remains of the hovercraft, tearing aside the shreds of the skirt and probing underneath. He was still dazed with shock as he desperately tried to find the body of his friend. He groped about the shambles created by Pitt, and his hands touched what remained of a man, stripped of his clothing, a sliced and gutted thing with no legs. One black eye, wide open and unseeing, was all he required to know it wasn't Pitt.
He fought off a sickening fear that it seemed impossible anyone could have survived that holocaust. He searched unavailingly, hopelessly, for some sight of a living body. God, where is he? Giordino cried in his mind. He began to feel beyond weary in his bones and was almost ready to give up in despair when something reached out of the darkness of the muck below him and grabbed his ankle. Giordino experienced an icy chill of panic that gave way to disbelief when he felt the hard grip of a living human. He spun around and saw a face leering at him, green eyes squinting to see through the liquid gloom, blood flowing from the nose and dissolving in the water.
As if risen from the dead, Pitt's lips tightened in a crooked little grin. His wet suit was in tatters and the dive mask had been torn from his head, but he was alive. He pointed up, released his hold on Giordino's ankle and kicked toward the surface a short five feet away. They broke the surface at the same time, Giordino grasping Pitt around the shoulders in a great bear hug.
"Damn you!" Giordino shouted. "You're alive."
"Damn me if I'm not," Pitt came back, laughing.
"How in God's name did you do it?"
"Dumb luck. After I heaved my air tank into the hovercraft's lift propeller and dove under the skirt, a stupid move by the way, I got no farther than eight feet when the tank exploded. The explosion blew outward and the resulting blast from the fuel tanks burst upward. I was unscathed until the concussion tore into me. I was blown into the muddy bottom, which cushioned my impact. It was a miracle my eardrums didn't burst. My ears are still ringing. I ache in places I didn't know existed. Every square inch of my body must be black-and-blue. Things went vague and woolly. I was knocked silly for a few moments but quickly recovered when I sucked on my regulator mouthpiece and found only my tongue along with a gush of swamp water. Gagging and retching, I made for the surface and floated around while pulling my mind and body together until I saw your air bubbles trail by."
"I thought for sure you bought the farm this time," said Giordino."Me too," Pitt agreed. He gingerly fingered his nose and a split lip. "Something struck my face when I was mashed into the canal bed-" He broke off and made a grimace. "Broken, my nose is broken. First time ever."
Giordino nodded his head at the devastation, the plantation house that had become a blazing inferno. "Did you ever determine which side of the family passed on your uncanny knack for causing destruction?"
"No pyromaniac ancestors that I know of."
Three security guards were still alive, one crawling away from the house, smoke curling from smoldering holes in the back of his uniform, the second lying dazed on the edge of the bank, weaving back and forth, his hands cupped to ears whose eardrums had burst. Four bodies floated in the flame-lit waters. The rest of the security force had disappeared. The third living guard stood in shock, staring dumbly at the shattered wreckage of the hovercraft with blood from a gash across one cheek flowing down his neck and dyeing his shirt crimson.
Pitt swam to the bank, came to his feet and walked ashore. The guard stared wide-eyed at the black-suited apparition from the canal as if he was an alien creature from the swamp. He convulsively reached for the gun in his side holster, but it had been torn away by the explosions. He turned and tried to run, staggered a few steps and fell. The apparition, with blood streaming from his nose, stared down.
"You speak English, my friend?"
"Yes," the guard nodded, replying in a voice hoarse with shock. "I learned American vocabulary."
"Good. You tell your boss, Qin Shang, that Dirk Pitt wants to know if he still stoops over and picks up bananas. You got that?"
The guard stumbled several times, repeating the sentence, but with Pitt's coaching he finally got it right. "Dirk Pitt wants to know if the esteemed Qin Shang still stoops over and picks up bananas."
"Nice going," Pitt said jovially. "You move to the head of the class."
Then Pitt casually strolled back to the canal and waded out to Giordino, who was waiting in the skiff.
35
JULIA WAS THANKFUL when darkness arrived. Moving through the shadows along the outside deck of the towboat toward the bow, she slipped over the side onto the barge and hid amid the black plastic bags of trash. She was not happy about the faint light thrown by a waning moon, but it enabled her to keep track of crew movements on board the towboat and to observe the countryside for geographical references as to location. She also followed the direction of her progress by glancing up every few minutes at Polaris, the North Star.
Unlike the featureless landscape of the central Atchafalaya Valley, the grassy banks of Bayou Teche supported a thick canopy of live oak trees, interspersed with stately cypresses and lithe willows. But like the edge of a checkerboard, the tree belt opened up every mile to reveal lights of farmhouses and dim, moonlit fields of newly planted crops. Behind fenced pastures, Julia could make out the shapes of cattle grazing. She recognized the sound of a meadowlark and fleetingly wished that she had a family and a home. She knew the day was not far off when her superiors at INS would curtail her hazardous attempts to stop Chinese immigrant-smuggling operations and put her behind a desk.
The towboat and barge passed what seemed a picturesque fishing town that Julia would later learn was Patterson. Docks lined the waterfront with fishing trawlers taking up almost every slip. She made a mental note of how the town was laid out along the bayou as it receded in the distance. The towboat captain blew his air horn as a drawbridge drew into sight. The bridge tender dutifully tooted his horn in reply and raised the span to allow passage.
A few miles above Patterson the towboat slackened its speed and began easing toward the west bank. Peering over the side of the barge, Julia could see a large, warehouselike brick structure with several outer buildings that were spaced around a long dock. A high chain-link fence with barbwire strung along the top encircled the compound. A few scattered floodlights with dim and dusty bulbs in their sockets ineffectually illuminated the open area between the dock and warehouse. The only sign of life Julia could see was a guard who exited a little shack and stood at a closed gate on the end of the dock. She noted that he was wearing the common uniform sold by private security services. Through a window of the shack, she could see the reflected images of a television screen.
Her heart gave a leap when she spied a pair of railroad tracks that ran down a concrete culvert under the big warehouse. She believed with growing certainty that this was the main staging center from where the illegals were transported to their predetermined destinations. Once there, they were either enslaved or released into heavily populated metropolitan cities.
She burrowed under the trash bags as the Chinese crew came aboard the barge and tied it to the dock. When the barge was secure, they leaped back on board the towboat. There was no word spoken between the captain, crew and the guard behind the gate. The captain gave a brief blast on his air hom to signal his intentions to a small shrimp boat about to pass by. The towboat slowly reversed away from the barge, swinging its stem wide until a 180-degree turn was completed and the flat-nosed bow was pointing down the bayou. Then the captain engaged FORWARD, increased speed and set the towboat on a course back toward Sungari.
The next twenty minutes were spent in a strange silence that began to frighten Julia. Not from personal fear of her safety, but a dread that perhaps she had made a mistake. The guard had long since returned to his shack and his television. The barge full of trash lay moored to the dock, dismissed and neglected.
Julia had contacted Captain Lewis aboard the Weehawken soon after her leap onto the towboat and informed him of her reckless enterprise. Lewis was not a happy camper when he realized that the woman whose safety was in his hands had taken a terrible risk. Professional that he was, he brushed aside his frustration and ordered a launch full of armed men under Lieutenant Stowe to follow the towboat and barge as a backup to the helicopter. His only order to Stowe was to keep a respectful distance behind the towboat and not arouse suspicion. Julia could hear the whine of the helicopter's engines and see its navigation lights in the night sky.